MOGADISHU, 8 October 2006 — Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement ordered the partial closure of the border with neighboring Ethiopia yesterday, accusing Ethiopian troops of invading, mining and shelling Somali territory.
As tension soared anew, fueling fears of large-scale conflict, the Islamists shut border crossings in Somalia’s central Hiran region for “national security reasons” and put down a fresh protest against them in the south.
“The border with Ethiopia is closed in the Hiran region for national security reasons,” said deputy regional security chief Sheikh Hussein Mohamud Gagale.
“Ethiopian soldiers are conducting military maneuvers around Sarirale village, which is inside Somali territory,” he told Mogadishu’s Simba radio, noting that Sarirale is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the border.
“They also planted land mines around the border areas,” Gagale said. “The mines could kill our people and animals so we have taken the decision to block the border.” As it has done in the past, most recently on Thursday when the Islamists accused Ethiopian forces of shelling the nearby border town of Beledweyne and sending in thousands of troops, Addis Ababa immediately denied the claims.
“These are false allegations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Solomon Abebe said in Addis Ababa. “The extremists try to use Ethiopia as a cover to hide the real motives behind the curtain.” He repeated denials that any Ethiopian troops were in or near Beledweyne.
Beledweyne is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the Ethiopian border and 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of Mogadishu, which the Islamists seized from warlords in June and have used as base for rapid expansion.
Mainly Christian Ethiopia is wary of the rise of the Islamists who it accuses of being “jihadists” and is backing Somalia’s weak transitional government and its calls for the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force.
The Islamists are vehemently opposed to peacekeepers and have vowed to fight any foreign troops on Somali soil, particularly those from Ethiopia, as they move to cement their hold on southern and central Somalia. In the key port of Kismayo, residents and officials said Islamist gunmen had opened fire and arrested nearly 100 people in the early hours of yesterday as they put down a new protest against their seizure of the town last month.
Heavily armed gunmen fired into the air to disperse several hundred chanting demonstrators who burned tires and threw stones to show their opposition to the taking of the port by the Islamists on Sept. 24, they said.
“I was among the protesters when the gunmen shot at us,” said organizer Farhan Ahmed. “Fortunately, no one was hurt but everybody was shocked.” Another organizer, Hassan Ahmed Abdullahi, said 97 people had been detained for “exercising their right to oppose an unwanted administration.”
Islamist officials confirmed they had broken up what they described as a “violent and unlicensed demonstration” but declined to say how many people had been arrested. The protest was the fourth against the Islamists since they seized the town, about 500 kilometers south of Mogadishu, after a local militia allied to the transitional government fled.
